The businesses, residents and scenes that mark Fall River's neighborhoods are the focus of an art exhibit opening this Saturday at the Narrows Center for the Arts. But the familiar, and not-so familiar sights in the Spindle City weren't captured by professional photographers. They were shot through the lens of B.M.C Durfee High School photography students and sociology students at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

“Fall River Portraits: People, Neighborhood, Community,” is the result of a collaboration between Mark Carvalho, photography instructor at B.M.C. Durfee High School, and Andrea Klimt, anthropology professor at UMass Dartmouth.

Klimt, who had the idea for the project for the students in her Photography in Digital Culture class, obtained a University of Massachusetts Creative Economy grant and approached Carvalho with the idea of the collaboration.

In part, because she wanted to work on a project that involved student from Durfee, but also because she thought the students in their respective classes would benefit from the cross experience. For the Durfee students, it was an opportunity to showcase their lives in the city's varied neighborhoods, and also look at them though the lens of an urban sociologist, said Klimt.

Carvalho said the project was beneficial to his students on a variety of levels including challenging their perceptions of the city and what makes a photograph. "One of the challenges of teaching digital photography in this area is student perception of their community. We look at grandiose photos of landscapes and striking images from all over the world. Often I hear from my students that there’s nothing to photograph in Fall River," he said.

"This project has given my students a new focus for their photography and a pass to walk in to local businesses and explore the people and places that have existed in Fall River for generations."

For the students in Klimt's class, the project was an opportunity to learn about the city and learn how to capture their individual experiences with Carvalho's photography expertise. Klimt said she challenged the high school and college students to look at Fall River with the eyes of an urban sociologist. "I would ask them questions such as 'If you had a friend on the other side of the world what you think is important for their them to know about the city.' I tried to get them to think sociologically, not just about the picture,'" she said.

In several visits over a couple months, Klimt's students met with more than 40 business owners along Columbia, Pleasant and South Main streets, learning firsthand about the barbershops, bakeries, tattoo parlors and other enterprises that make up the various neighborhoods. Tasked with "thinking sociologically," Klimt said the students were told to think about ethnic diversity, the role of religion in the communities, what do families and kids do for activities in the neighborhoods. "I pushed them to make a sociological story through pictures," she added.

Page 2 of 2 - And like the students in Klimt's class, it was also an eye-opening experience for the Durfee students, who visited new parts of the city and met with the owners of businesses that they may have never thought about before embarking upon this project. "Through exploration of the cityscape students found areas of the city that they never knew existed. It was truly an eye opening experience to the aspects that are special to Fall River and the things that their generation has the potential to change," said Carvalho.

An Artists’ Reception will take place on Saturday, May 10, from 1 to 3 p.m, at the Narrows Center for the Arts, 16 Anawan Street in Fall River. Admission is free. The public is cordially invited. The show will be open from May 10 until May 31. For more information see narrowscenter.org.